


The Red Snake

by caramelsilver



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, Gen, The Sorting Hat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-04
Updated: 2016-02-04
Packaged: 2018-05-18 06:26:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5901769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caramelsilver/pseuds/caramelsilver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She was eleven and going to Hogwarts, and no one had ever thought about the possibility of her becoming anything other than a Gryffindor. She was a Weasley after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Red Snake

She was eleven and going to Hogwarts, and no one had ever thought about the possibility of her becoming anything other than a Gryffindor. She was a Weasley after all.

It wasn’t exactly normal for an entire sibling brood to end up in the same house. After all, there was so many of them, how could they all be Gryffindors? But all the Weasley sons had joined Gryffindor, one after the other.

GRYFFINDOR! GRYFFINDOR! GRYFFINDOR! GRYFFINDOR! GRYFFINDOR! GRYFFINDOR!

So when her time came, no one really paid attention. She was the last Weasley, but she WAS after all a Weasley. There were no bets on where she would end up, no money changing hands, because no one wanted to bet against the house. The Gryffindor House.

She was eleven years old, and no one was interested in her, because her fate was already sealed. She was just another red head, she was just another lion cub, and with that thought in mind, Ginny walked slowly up to the hat.

The stool was to high for her, so her legs dangled in the air as she climbed up on it. She looked nervously up at Professor McGonagall, and then she saw nothing. The hat was slipped on her head, and it got dark.

She was eleven years old, and with all her older brothers in Gryffindor, she had never really thought about where she would go. Wasn’t it already decided that she would become a Gryffindor?

But then, to her complete and utter surprise, the hat ASKED her, “what do you want? Where do you want to go?”

And little Ginny Weasley hesitated.

She hesitated, and she suddenly realised… No one had asked her that before! She hesitated and the hat noticed. It told her that she was a Weasley and would of course do wonderfully in Gryffindor. It was all there in her head. But it saw something else in her head too. A wish to stand out, to not do the expected, to be noticed for her, and not as the last Weasley child. It could put her somewhere else, it could do that, because that was all in her head as well. She would thrive alone.

The minutes passed, and the once so quiet Great Hall started to buzz. Never had the hat spent so much time in placing a Weasley child. Ginny could vaguely hear the rooms unrest, but she paid it no mind, she was far too preoccupied with her racing heart, the thought of a new future, a new world she never imagined before.

As the pounding of her heart drowned out all other noise, the hat asked her again - “What do you want, Ginny Weasley?” This had become her decision. It was her future, and no one else’s.

She took a deep breath and held on to all her Weasley courage and said quietly, “Not Gryffindor.”

There was silence in her head, and she knew the hat was thinking. Then it said, “If not Gryffindor, then there is only one other house for you…” it trailed off, still leaving the decision to her. Her future was in her own small hands.

And she knew, she knew before he said it, and she nodded, knowing it had to be so. If not Gryffindor, then her house had to be…

“SLYTHERIN!”

The silence after the hats decision was deafening.

The hat was removed slowly from her head, and she looked up at the slightly shocked expression on Professor McGonagalls face. By the total silence of the room, she wasn’t the only one who was shocked. Normally there was cheering and booing when a house was called out. But both Gryffindor and Slytherin was completely silent. They just looked at her.

Then the first year Slytherins, her new housemates, started clapping, and the Hall woke up from its daze. The applause got louder, but there was no booing, mostly because the ones usually booing was her twin brothers, and they would never boo her, not even now, now that she was a snake, a Slytherin.

Ginny slipped off the stool, and instead of walking towards her brothers, who still looked like they were petrified, she walked to the right, over to her new future, her new house, towards the Slytherins, and she felt… Brave.


End file.
